Villages in the Sky: DIY World Change

Arrow just gave us the solar panels which has been used for Biotour and his old offices in Manhatten.

A wild man kicks in to the cause

Our favorite outlaw laywer Diana from Brooklyn was rightly chastising us the other day for not being public with the dates of our fair event.  So without further ado:

Villages in the Sky will be held from June 1 thru 6, 2010 in the Ozarks

It is not so simple with the ticket prices.  We dont really have ticket prices, we have something between ticket conversations and negotiations.  Originally there was going to be a grid, with two axes.  Your ticket price increased by the amount of wealth you had access to and it decreased by the eco-friendliness of your transport here.

Using this scheme roughly, we have sold the first ticket to someone who is worth more than a million dollars and they bought it for $1,000.  Of course only a tiny number of tickets will be sold at this price, but if we are serious about taking on climate change and peak oil – the folx who are going to pay for that are well off.

So now what we are thinking is something like

Students and low income    $50 to $75

Working or middle class    $100 to $250

affluent                            $500 to $2000

if you have no income and any willingness to help do landscape work, construction or set up for the event the best thing to do is to plan to come early during seed camp.  Participants in seed camp get free access to the event and get feed by the festival before it starts.

Travel discounts:

If you bike or walk to this event you are having the minimal carbon footprint and you can cut your ticket price by 60%.  If you are taking a train to the nearest city you can cut your price by 50% – contact us about arranging shuttles.  If you are taking the bus you can cut your ticket cost by 35%.  If you are carpooling with more than 2 adults people or taking the bus you can cut your cost by 20%.  If you are flying any leg of the trip you need to pay full ticket price.

The changing plans and escalating numbers on my gchat status around this trip to East Wind became something of a running joke.  36 hours before we were going to leave the trip was size 5 people – we ultimately changed vehicles 4 times and brought 10.  This was a bit shocking to our hosts at East Wind who rarely have visitor groups this size.  But it seem like folks are integrating in well.

We left Cville at around 8 PM after some second thoughts and tears,  And fortunately Wrenegade (age 8 months) slept thru the entire journey.  We had added Wizard (aka Kenrique) as a passenger, thus allowing us to use a Twin Oaks minivan and his amazing driving stamina.  We were at East Wind just after lunch, causing Sara some headache getting ready for us in a shorter than expected period.

Pilgrim is bringing as many able bodies out to the magic meadow festival site as he can for clearing and burning brush and building huge stacks of firewood.  Yellow Sun (aka Nile) drove us and some beautiful black walnut lumber back and gave us the grand tour of the saw mill.

Will is looking at moving into Marco Polo (the newly named shed we are clearing of wood and insects) and being one of the first people on the land.  He is also something of a mycologist and served me the most foul tasting mushroom tea i have ever had this morning.    Hopefully Will be adding photos to this site soon.  We played magic today, which was a nice break for me from rushing around to get ready for the architects.

There is never a dull moment in this manic adventure we’re co-creating out here in the Ozarks.  It’s taxes season and Pilgrim’s got to head east for a number of days to take care of business back home and to see his step-granddaughter grow a year older.  A couple of days ago we were standing on the front porch of RB in the snowy sunshine and he asked if I could deliver him to the train station about two and a half hours away in Arkansas to catch a train that left at 1:41 in the morning.  Of course, I didn’t hesitate.

Pilgrim is family now–part of this tightly knit and wonderfully complex group of people dedicated to VIS and living it daily–and I’d do about anything for him.  I was a little nervous about traveling back by myself at such an hour, but Bean joined the trip to keep me awake.

At ten last night we started off: Pilgrim, Bean, myself and a friend, Mike who we were dropping off to begin an unplanned journey to New Orleans.  The company was good and the coffee was hot and we didn’t notice when we had passed a poorly marked turn that would take us to the train station.  Raucously we stormed along enjoying each other and that last bit of time together before we parted ways.  When we hit a town that looked big enough to be on our map but wasn’t, we got nervous.

Fortunately, it was a better spot to leave Mike to start his journey south so we hugged goodbye and got back in the car to fly north, trying to outpace the train.  I’m on the phone with Amtrak waiting for someone to tell me the train, like all Amtrak trains, was running late.  Unfortunately, when Robert came on the phone he told me the unusual news that the train was running on time as we were running out of time.  Perfect.

Of course it would’ve been no fun if we hadn’t gotten lost again.  By around 2:15 in the morning, when we’re certain we’ve missed the train, we pull into a gas station, not certain where we are but knowing we’re tantalizingly close.  We go in and ask for directions only to find out we’re in Walnut Ridge (our final destination) miles from the train station.  But we’ve admitted defeat and instead we make a B-line for the closest motel.

We ring the bell a couple of times and out of the back comes the elderly proprietor looking a little groggy at 2:20 in the morning.  As Pilgrim and I are inside filling out the paperwork to get him a room, I hear a train whistle blow somewhere nearby.  And then the train passes right in front of the motel and Pilgrim and I exchange an incredulous look and wonder aloud if it could be.  The man behind the counter asks where Pilgrim is headed and when we answer Chicago–in unison–he tells us that’s our train.

Pilgrim and I fly out of the building and yell at Bean to get in the car as Pilgrim slams the trunk closed.  Bean, totally oblivious to what we’ve just discovered, plays bad movie scenes in her head, wondering what we’ve done to the poor old man in the motel.  I put us in reverse and scream out of the parking lot–chasing the train down the middle of this tiny town at 2:30 in the morning, hoping to god we can catch it.

With ten seconds to spare we shove a sentimental Pilgrim onto the train–he wants to tell us he loves us, to take a picture.  But there’s no time and the grumpy conductor is threatening to leave if he doesn’t get on.  As the train pulls out of the station Bean and I do a little victory dance in the parking lot and, exhausted by the adventure, slide back into the car to drive three hours home.

We stop for gas where, maybe 15 minutes before we’d stopped for directions and I notice an Arkansas police officer pull in as I’m pumping gas.  I’m probably visibly agitated, recalling my mad driving of moments before, hoping he hadn’t followed us here.  But nothing happens and we get back in the car, Bean in the driver’s seat this time.  Not far down the road, we notice head lights behind us and Bean gets nervous.  She asks me what the speed limit is and travels five miles under.  Another mile down the road the blue lights start flashing.  Now it’s like a bad dream.

The cop harasses us for awhile–he’s from the drug unit, bored at 3:00 in the morning and having fun with two totally exhausted travelers.  He asks us why we’re nervous; he can somehow tell from outside our window that our heart rates are elevated.  We try to explain–lots of coffee, almost missed trains, but he won’t back off and we sit there for nearly fifteen minutes waiting to see what his move is.  But he’s got nothing and finally let’s us go.  We’re on edge the rest of the way back, but we pull into East Wind–after driving passed the poorly marked turn onto county road 530–at 5:30 in the morning.

We brush our teeth, wash our faces and fall into bed, exhausted but not quite able to fall asleep.  We’d done it–against all good sense, we got Pilgrim onto his train and we made it back alive and unticketed.  And as I recounted the story this morning, this afternoon, I guess, a friend asked me if anything good had happened on the adventure.  And I was surprised by the question.  Because the answer seemed obvious: every bit of bad luck we had was actually good luck.  We got lost the first time and found Mike a better starting point; we got lost a second time and found a motel on the train tracks and watched our train race towards the train station; and even the cop, who’d threatened to give us a 250$ ticket didn’t, in the end, because he had no right pulling us over in the first place.

It’s funny, I travel and work and play with this pack of chosen family and even when everything’s looking like it’s working against us, it turns up.  The part I left out was that yesterday had been a terrible day, all of these cracks started surfacing out here at East Wind and I was at odds with even my best allies before I took a late night trip to Arkansas.  And then I was reminded of the strength of our team, of the depth of our working and personal relationships and that, when you’re trying to do the right thing, even the bad luck hides good intentions.  I couldn’t have been reminded in a more perfect moment.

There are really only three neighbors within close range to East Wind Community.  We’ve already met the Satterfields and gotten permission to park festival traffic on their land–which will work brilliantly as long as we can keep the cows from making nice with the cars.  The third neighbor is Mrs. Miller.  She’s eighty and in great health and lives all by herself on a piece of enviable land that bumps up to East Wind’s property.  The view from the top of the foothill she lives on is pretty breathtaking and her front porch, in my humble southern girl’s opinion, begs for rocking chairs.  As Qn and I pulled into her driveway I was taken aback by the awesome beauty and the isolation.

And then I met Mrs. Miller.  She, like the Satterfields, has lived on this land for decades and has no desire to leave it–despite the tireless persuasions of a son in Memphis.  And, like the Satterfields also, has a great fondness for East Wind, great appreciation for the big and small ways they’ve been a neighbor over the years.  We talked about other business and then mentioned the festival that would be literally right next door.  She was unphased, again trusting the judgment of a community that had put itself on call to support her as she was taking care of her ailing husband, and soon we’d moved beyond business.

Mrs. Miller showed off her new stove to me and sent Qn off to look at an industrial refrigerator-freezer she thought East Wind could use, so that her and I could have “girl talk.”  It was wonderful!  I scratched the surface of her stories, her history here in the Ozarks, her fondness of the country, but the trip was brief and my curiosity was well piqued.  Already I’ve talked to some of the women here and soon I want to plan a spontaneous cookie fueled girl talk session with Mrs. Miller.  I imagine I’ll visit her semi-regularly while I’m living here and I am certain we’ll become best friends.

It’s refreshing to be here and to see how these unconventional neighbors really support and love one another.  And it’s just another unexpected perk of my work here to get to make friends and build personal relationships with them!

But it sure does go slower.  Two days ago we got about 8+ inches of snow here in Tecumseh, MO which has thrown me into a childish tailspin.  The morning I woke to see snow falling I hurried into warm clothes and rushed to RB–which is the main dining hall community building here.  I found a couple of likewise delighted friends and we made french toast and played with thousand piece puzzles and drank coffee.  It was kind of wonderful.

The snow has made getting out onto the festival grounds a bit difficult, so Pilgrim and I have switched gears a little.  We’ve been plotting how to manage the influx of volunteers coming west at the end of February, shifting around priorities so we can house and feed a small crew out on the land much sooner than anticipated.  It will be great to have extra hands early, because as amazing as Pilgrim is, he can’t do it all by himself.  We’ve got clearing and building and planning to do all at once and in just four months.  The sooner we can get started, the better!

And Matthew, a member here at EW, and Pilgrim have been doing the foundational work on the map our expert architects need for their master planning.  As soon as the snow and ice melt away a little and we can get back to the site safely, they’ll be walking the land and filling in the details requested by the architects.

Things are coming together even when the weather is delightfully distracting!

One of the cool things which has happened with the project is that these professional architects have offered to help us.  They will be coming in late February and helping us develop a multi-year masterplan for the site.

Of course they need things from us.  First they want a site survey.  Since we are building tree houses and zip lines they want to know about the trees on the site, their size, type, suitability for these applications.  So we have a crack team of Matthew and Pilgrim to find these trees and bring back surveys of them for the architects.

The other things they want is a project descriptions which tells them what we want.  This is of course a bit tricky, because we want more stuff than could possibly be completed on time.  I got good marks from Al Ross for the outline below as the template for the information they need for the masterplan.  Thought i would share  it here.

• Goals of the Project
• Project Time Table (including estimated work force)
• Architectural elements planned to be included in the project
• Known functions/events the space should host
• Special considerations for reused and recycled materials
• Multi-year considerations (what is important in 2010 and then 2011)
• Zoning of the site for different types of spaces (kid friendly, supervised use only, construction areas, etc).
• Availability of Garnie limbs and other special tree house constructing equipment.

Sara and i will start kicking out the answers to these, and anyone else who has an opinion on the topic.  Which of course brings up my big failing in the project to date, which is that i have not implemented this cool wiki project management plan i have had for some months which would permit people who want to help to know what we need to have help with.

What is also exciting is that Harley and Robert who are friends of Haydens are talking about coming out in the Feb trip and volunteering.  More hands on deck – super cool.  Hopefully they will be introducing themselves soon in the comments or posts here.

Being at east wind is important for me, and the delightful balance of my life continues.  it’s sometimes hard to get motivated to sit in front of a computer when there are so many easy distractions.  the downstairs kitchen in anarres* provides ample amusement for a slightly silly organizer who enjoys all things childish.  the other morning, a handful of us were making breakfast together, which led into a couple of games of rummikub, which, in turn, bled into a raucous game of ants in your pants.  yes, three adult bodied people sat around the kitchen table trying to shoot small, brightly colored plastic ants into a pants shaped bucket.  and the satisfaction of success was maybe a little too great.  it took all my will power to step away from the table after getting every last ant into the target.

but as fun as little kid games can be, i was moving off into the realm of equally exciting fundraising, with a success satisfaction level even greater than bouncing an ant off of the suspenders and into the pants.  villages in the sky is an ambitious project and we’ve got lots of incredible work to do.  which means we need some kind of funding.  i am currently working on grant applications for three different foundations, but i have little experience in this realm and am always seeking other editors and foundation leads.  if you know some more progressive foundations or have experience writing grants, i’d love to get your help!

and soon we’ll be creating mechanisms for personal donations, so that all of our funding doesn’t come with foundational strings attached.  slowly, we’re growing up and digging in.  but it’s going to take a lot of hands to help us thrive.

* annares is the anarchistic egalitarian planet from Ursala Le Guins brilliant science fiction story The Dispossessed.  It is also the name of one of the residential buildings at East Wind

Four months ago as i was walking the magic meadow site and looking at the tremendous volume of brush that needed clearing i said “we need to get Pilgrim here, way before April.”  And now Pilgrim is there, with a shiny new chain saw and he looked around and said “We need to get a bunch more hands on this problem way before April.”  East Wind has been helping quite a bit, but it is not the communities job to build out festival site.

So i have started recruiting, which is my favorite job actually.  First it was Hayden who is on the edge of finishing his GED and in conventional classifications would be a a “kid at risk”.  What i see is a jem ready to reveal itself and choose important cuts.  With some luck and some tutoring he will come out on the next trip from Twin Oaks (Virginia) to East Wind (Ozarks) on Feb 18th.

What is also exciting was that Erica and her young daughter Wrenagade (see photo above) are probably coming out as well.  Below is the CraigsList ad she recently ran.
(t)hey say it takes a village to raise a child. so where is it? why aren’t we living in this village, raising each others children? we all know the answer. simply put, the alienation of families makes life difficult, and consumerism more productive. we’ve replaced grandmothers with talking bears and bouncy chairs. anything and everything to give mommy a break. as a new other, this is NOT acceptable to me. I want our village, without mind-numbing TV, electronic babysitters, instant formulas, all things that only make life easier for that instant, but at a dire familial, social, and cultural cost that we all see the effects of.

I’m tired of complaining about what my daughter and I don’t have. I want to go out and get it. We want to live simply primitively, supportively, communally, spiritually, maternally, matriarchally, openly. some of these terms might scare some people off because of being red-tagged, but I assure you – if I say carefree, i don’t mean careless. when I say open, i don’t mean anything goes. when I say communally I don’t mean lack of personal space. when I say matriarchally, I don’t mean anti-male. I think all the mothers reading this know exactly what I mean because it pulls at our primordial strings in a very familiar ancient way.  so how do we get what we all need? how do we make it work when we get it? what do we have to give up? how do we get the support we need to accomplish our goals?

we’re so used to living autonomously. there are plenty of individuals wanting to live more simply, in the woods, farming, bartering…..by themselves, because they have their individual vision and want things to go the way they imagine things should go. plenty of groups who’ve tried to live in a village have failed for that very reason – because their visions could not be lined up. but with the way this system is going, I don’t see it possible to do it any other way. we need each other now more than ever. we need story time around the hearth, drumming, chanting, chopping wood, initiations, direct interactions with everything and everyone, reflecting Nature that knows no good vs. evil, shame or blame, just cause and effect. i come to you all with nothing of my own…..except this vision and the drive to make it happen, to pull resources together, network, and realize.

Looks like her village is looking for our village.

we’ve been here three days and already life is falling into an interesting balance.  rachel woke me this morning before sunrise with a kiss on the cheek and asked if i was still coming to play with the horses.  we were both confused; east wind doesn’t have horses.  of course i slipped into my jeans and went downstairs to the anarres kitchen where there were scrambled eggs and coffee all ready for me.  we woke slowly and then walked out to do our ranch chores as the sun rose over the valley.  really, i don’t think i could think of a better way to start my day than having calves follow closely as i carry their feed to the trough midway through the pasture.  oh and chasing the chicken, of course.

we finished our chores and went back to the main dining room at east wind to see what the day would be like.  i ran into qn, who has good relations with the neighbors and had offered to take me to meet the satterfields.  we wanted to pay them some sum of money to park festival traffic on a corner of one of their pastures nearest the entrance to the festival grounds.  so, fresh from stomping around the ranch, i decided to change into a plaid jumper dress and flannel shirt complete with my workboots and alfalfa caught in my hair.  it was perfect.

mr and mrs satterfield are sweet and they want to help east wind, they want to help their neighbors.  after doing a bit of background checking, asking about the kinds of people who’d be coming, the kind of event we were hosting, they were satisfied that the risk was limited and immediately agreed upon a liability free contract with villages in the sky to lease enough land to park the cars that carry festival goers to the ozarks.

and this will be the unique nature of our work over the next few months as we prepare for build up camp.  there will be lots of flirting with the neighbors.  we need crumbling barns for salvage, we want an old farm truck for hauling brush, we are going to need to find outside sources of volunteer labor and outlets for local promotion, in kind donations from local businesses.  this revolution we’re building will take all sorts: the 78 year old lifelong neighbors, the chainsaw wielding boys, the web maniacs and the money husslers.  if you’re looking for your niche in the work, find us at villagesinthesky@gmail.org.   i promise you there’s some super power you have that will make our team stronger!  and keep coming back; life at east wind promises to be an adventure in itself.